“Don’t Confuse Motion with Progress” -Paul Ellingstad

If you’ve read our last post featuring Jason Russell of Invisible Children, you know he urged us to action and to take a chance by being a little crazy and doing what it takes right now to face the largest issues facing our generation, today.

In contrast, Paul Ellingstad from HP’s Office of Global Social Innovation asked us for patience. He agreed that critical action needed to be taken now in order to begin turning the tide on the fight against extreme poverty. However, “lasting change takes time,” he said. If it doesn’t stick, then what’s the point? All you’re left with is a whole lot of wasted energy and effort. Be deliberate. We can’t accept the feeling of movement as a marker of progress. We must always check ourselves by asking the hard questions: Is this valuable? Is this effective? Is this efficient?

“We must strive to live by the ‘Rules of the Garage'” -Paul Ellingstad

At the end of his presentation, Ellingstad pulled up a slide of the HP “Rules of the Garage”. These concise 12 rules are the foundation of the HP philosophy. Ellingstad left them with us as a reminder that the most basic truths found in the most mundane of circumstances can be used to build an empire. Stay true to the things you’ve learned and be honest about what you can accomplish. And always work like you’re still in your garage just trying your best to build something new.

This past weekend, 10 of our wonderful members and officers attended theMillennium Campus Conference (MCC) across the river at Harvard. MCC is an annual conference put on by the Millennium Campus Network–an awesome organization dedicated to connecting student groups across the nation in the quest to ending extreme poverty and accomplishing the Millennium Development Goals.

It was an incredible event and we give a huge thank you to the team of volunteers, staff, and students who helped organize and run the event. In particular, Nicole Theobold deserves a standing ovation for sending out emails like a mad woman and keeping everyone on track.

While the weekend was extremely busy, we got to hear from some truly incredible people and learned a lot from the keynote speakers, panelists, and workshop leaders. In order to spread the wealth of new knowledge and inspiration, we’re starting a series on our experience and take aways from the MCC.

We hope you’ll enjoy being exposed to some new non profits and hearing some words of wisdom. So stay tuned and check back for the first feature!

We’ve been horribly negligent in updating this, but we’re back and ready to renew our blog’s web presence. Hopefully, you haven’t completely forgotten us

To get you up to speed:

We closed our project in Peru and are working to open a new program. Students from the BU School of Public Health continue to work with the community and were just finishing up some more health surveys this past spring. For our newest program, we’ve been building connections with clinics in the Mazabuka district of Zambia via the Center for Global Health & Development (CGHD) and its local representative the Zambia Center for Applied Health Research and Development (ZCAHRD).

CGHD has started a pilot program in these rural Mazabuka district clinics to speed up the transmission of infant HIV/AIDS test results from dried blot spot (DBS) tests. By using SMS messaging, 1-3 weeks of waiting time can be trimmed. This means a quicker turnaround for a treatment plan, and acts as an incentive for mothers to return to the clinics for post natal care while their test results are arriving. The problem is cell phone reception. Because the clinics are rural the reception is very weak and unreliable. If we could offer a method to increase the reception, this program would be much more successful and relevant.

We are extremely excited at the prospect of collaborating with ZCAHRD. However, we still need to work with EWB-USA to be sure our project matches their mission and gets approved. Until then, we cannot ‘officially’ start any work on a project.

While we continue to work through the red tape and talk with national, our technical lead, Saeed, has been working to find a mentor on our campus with knowledge of cell phone reception.

The next item on our agenda is to throw our Annual Silent Auction Reception. This will be held on Thursday, October 27 at 6 pm on Boston University’s campus. We’d love to have all of our supporters turn out, so save the date!

The world needs a paradigm shift in how things are made and how frequently things are consumed. In a consumerist society like ours and many more in the western world we must step up for ourselves and spread this message.

Cynicism can only delay the time it takes one to realize the problem and will lengthen one’s exposure to harmful, avoidable, yet ignored discharge created by the same products one buys.
You can find much more at http://www.storyofstuff.com/